Lately I've been having strange dreams about SCORE!. It is very obviously because I'm back in the environment, but I'm wondering if my deep subconscious is in a state of regret.

I hate the word regret. It's probably because it's a very culturally Chinese state of mind - my mother has a history of being unable to get past things that have happened, either to her or to her children (although to be particular, anything that happens to her children happens to her) - but I guess through all of the 'mistakes' I've made I've realized that everything you experience teaches you something - the tougher the experience, the deeper the lesson - and that dwelling on things that have happened and the choices you've made does nothing but torture you. I mean, rationally, what is the point of considering all of the 'what-if's? So I've long abided by a rule of never regretting anything.

The things that I have to admit I do regret number in low single digits. I'll save the specifics for another post. (Ha!)

Anyway, my latest SCORE! dream took place back in my center in Chinatown. I showed up as present-day me, and my friend Sabena who took over the center shortly after I left, was still a director there, but she was the only one. (Each center has at least three directors to be fully staffed.) The Academic Coaches (part time kids... half of what I do now) were all there, and Sabena was telling me how hard it was running the center on her own, and how she wished I would come back.

I MEAN. SERIOUSLY. Subconscious, could you be any more obvious?

The thing is, the center I'm in now is a suburban center with a very different market focus than my inner-city center was. Because of the bilingual aspect of my center, it sometimes felt like a Mom and Pop shop, and because of the large membership (around 300 students enrolled) it sometimes felt like a zoo. Yet with our tiny, overflowing center, packed hours, and chaotic Saturdays, we were still pushed to find leads with an almost desperation that I found off-putting. Our Academic Coaches usually came and left to a full center, and we as directors never had nothing to do. But now, at my new center, the enrollment is probably half of what my old center's was, and yesterday I spent the latter two hours of my shift with a grand total of five kids. The pace and atmosphere is much more mellow, which has led me to wonder if I would have stuck around longer if I hadn't been at the Chinatown center.

But the thing is, I'm not sure I would have wanted any other experience. It was crazy, it was chaotic, it compromised my values, and it made me hate New York. But I also pushed my limits, learned how to communicate with many different kinds of people, and changed many children's lives. To be a director at a center like mine and have any sort of success is an accomplishment, no matter how long I stayed. I wonder if, had I been at a more mellow suburban center, I might have looked at the inner-city centers with envy because their directors had a 'tougher' job.

I don't want to regret my decision to leave SCORE!. My experiences after that, and the events that culminated from all of my actions since then, have been too valuable. I am not unhappy with where I am now, per se - and that's enough to tell me that I should be comfortable with all of the tough decisions I've made. Now I just have to convince my subconscious of the same.